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Okay, so I just bought a new Maxtor Ultra ATA/133 120gb 8mb Cache hard drive and I installed it, formatted it, and partitioned it. I've had it for a couple of days and I hadn't really payed close attention, but I've noticed that my system takes forever to boot up when I start, things load slower and my video games are glitchy now because it's not loading quick enough. I'm not getting any error messages and my computer doesn't crash. Everything else is fine. It just takes a while to load things and boot up. Is this because the new HDD is causing a strain on my memory? What is the problem here? I have 256mb DDR RD RAM and a 1.8 ghz Pent 4 processor. If it is because of the memory, does anyone know where I could find sticks of 512 RD RAM for my motherboard. Thanx much...

A few things come to mind for you to check:
1. Check to make sure DMA has been enabled (go to Control Panel, System and select Properties for your new hard drive). If DMA is not checked, check it... ignore any warning Windows gives you, reboot and see if it makes a difference (it should)

2. Windows Content Indexer may have been building a new index, but this would only affect your apparent response once you've logged on to Windows.

3. Make sure your motherboard BIOS is up to date. Some older BIOS versions have trouble with Hard drive sizes greater than 80Gb (even if you partition)

4. Did you install the drive with a Dynamic Drive Overlay?

Doctor Micro"Computers enable us to make mistakes at the speed of light"

1. I Went to System, Device Manager, went to hard drives clicked on the maxtor, brought up the properties. I couldn't find anywere where it says DMA. Under policies I have "Enable write caching on the Disk" checked.

2. How do i check to see if my motherboard BIOS is up to date?

3. What in the heck is Dynamic Drive Overlay?

Sorry if I'm a pain in the butt. I don't know much about computers, but I'm sure willing to learn. :o :thumb:

I mis-directed you for the DMA options. Sorry about that. It's actually under the IDE Controller Section - Advanced.

Dynamic Drive Overlays are a way for older systems to use and recognize large hard drives. If you installed your Maxtor hard drive using the supplied MAXBLAST disk that came with your hard drive (unless you bought an OEM drive), then there's a good chance you're using a Dynamic Drive Overlay. If this is the case, just leave it alone.

Conversely, if you didn't use the MAXBLAST disk to install your drive and your system sees the full 120Gb size, then you don't need a Dynamic Drive Overlay anyway.

For BIOS upgrades, go to your system's or motherboards website. Usually, under a heading like "Support" or "Downloads" or "Software" you can find information on checking or updating your system BIOS (assuming yours supports flash upgrades)

Upgrading your RAM, while it will help your overall system performance, doesn't have very much to do with hard drive performance. Check with your System or Motherboard manufacturer (or your current documentation) to see how much and what type of RAM your system will support before you plunk down any cash for RAM you might not be able to use.

Lastly, if you plugged your spankin-new 120Gb hard drive into the same IDE channel that you have your CD-ROM on, then your hard drive is being choked by the PC33 or PC66 speed of your CD-ROM. If you have only one hard drive and one CD-ROM (or DVD, etc), make sure that your CD-ROM and hard drive are on different IDE channels (your motherboard should have two, and each one will support two devices... BUT the speed of the channel will operate at the SLOWEST speed of the SLOWEST device on that channel... which is usually the CD-ROM)

FYI, when you post "I've got a problem" kind of message, it would be helpful if you could include details about your system configuration and what kind of operating system you're using. See some of the other posts in these forums for examples.

Doctor Micro"Computers enable us to make mistakes at the speed of light"

A good thought. I'd not known about Maxtor's Silent Store technology before (I usually prefer Western Digital or the Seagate Barracuda series, but several of my clients have Maxtor drives so I might check them out with the AMSET utility next time I see them)

I'm also wondering if perhaps he has S.M.A.R.T. fault detection enabled in his BIOS. Going to a larger hard drive could also slow down his boot sequence with S.M.A.R.T. enabled versus his original & smaller drive (i.e., more sectors to check).

Doctor Micro"Computers enable us to make mistakes at the speed of light"